We just learned that Alison Poor, an advanced doctoral student in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, won a Peggy Jean Connor Research Award that will provide her with $960 to support her dissertation. Ali’s dissertation, “Predictors of Relational Aggression in Women Across Adulthood” will use MTurk to recruit participants, and this award should cover her payments to participants.

The Peggy Jean Connor Research Award is given annually by the University of Southern Mississippi’s Committee on Services & Resources for Women to promote research on gender issues by faculty and graduate students and professional development activities for staff. As part of the award, Ali will present her research in March.

Congratulations, Ali!

Tags: relational aggression, gender

Alison Poor, an advanced doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab at the University of Southern Mississippi, successfully proposed her dissertation this week. Ali’s dissertation aims to learn more about relational aggression and victimization among adult women through the lens of social information processing theory (Crick & Dodge, 1994). Her planned use of an MTurk sample will allow her to test a theoretically derived model across three developmental periods.

Ali’s dissertation builds on her thesis work, which highlighted the role of anger rumination in relational aggression. She is adding a number of other variables that will allow her to test some proposed mediation and moderation relationships in one model, but we are most excited about her plans to conduct invariance testing across age groups. There has been relatively little research on relational aggression among adults, and we should learn more from Ali’s study.

Congratulations to Ali on her successful proposal!

Tags: relational aggression, victimization, anger rumination

The Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab in the School of Psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi is happy to welcome two new students who will be entering the Counseling Psychology Master’s Program in the fall. Terrina’Za Myles completed her undergraduate work at Alcorn State University and is interested in anger management, aggression, and college mental health. Nicole Kollmann completed her undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point. She is interested in dark personality traits and their application in correctional settings. Clearly, both have research interests that are a great fit for the work that we do.

Congratulations to Nicole and Terrina’Za on their admission to the MS program! We are looking forward to working with you both.

Tags: admissions

The Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab is happy to welcome our newest doctoral student: Jacqueline Strowd. Jacq has been working with us during her time in our Counseling Psychology MS program, but she will be joining us in the Fall as a newly admitted doctoral student. She already has some good ideas for her dissertation and has proven herself to be very capable, so we are confident that she will have a smooth transition to the Ph.D. program.

Prior to joining our MS program, Jacq graduated with a master’s degree in Criminal Justice from Northeastern University. She is interested in a career as a practicing psychologist in a setting that allows her to work with a diverse clientele, and she is particularly interested in both Veterans and offenders in the process of reentry. She also hopes to provide training and supervision to counseling professionals, so she has not ruled out obtaining an adjunct position at a university where she could be involved in practicum training.

Congratulations to Jacq on her admission to the doctoral program! We are excited to continue working with her.

Tags: admissions

Taylor Nocera, an advanced doctoral student currently completing her predoctoral internship at the Orlando VA, recently let us know that she has accepted a postdoc position focused on PTSD at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, CA.

Congratulations to Taylor!

Tags: postdoc

Every year around this time, advanced doctoral students in applied psychology programs learn whether they matched with the predoctoral psychology internship sites they ranked following a highly competitive application process. We are happy to announce that two advanced doctoral students working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, Savannah Merold and Philip Stoner, matched with the sites they ranked. Philip will be completing his predoctoral internship at the Federal Correctional Complex in Petersburg, VA, and Savannah will be completing her predoctoral internship at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, MO.

Congratulations to Savannah and Philip on the successful match!

Tags: internship